Pericope
by Just A Little Birdy
Summary: When Mallory Reynolds, a girl of poetry and forgetting, becomes the target of a serial killer, someone has to be there to pick up the pieces.
1. The Things That Came In Threes

A/N: Soo just a general note that this may take a couple of chapters to get going - the third chapter I think is where our favourite Doctor Reid really gets a part in the story. Chapter 2 will be short, I promise, and hopefully you all don't mind reading a lot about Mallory? (I got scared of messing up the actual characters and focused more on my original characters and then realised maybe that would be boring and hopefully it isn't?)

Have fun!

Disclaimer: I own nothiiiiing except maybe the Reynolds :(

**One**

The Things That Came In Threes

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><p><em>Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear;<em>

_The wheels revolve, the universe keeps running._

_(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)_

-Sylvia Plath

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><p>The first time they met, she was at the bottom of a stairwell in an unfamiliar building. He was coming in; she was feverently wishing she could go out. She'd planted herself in the middle of the staircase, on the second step up, her feet placed neatly beside each other two steps down. A book was balanced on her knees – <em>The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath<em>. Just a little down the hall, the door to her aunt's apartment stood ajar, and she could hear three voices wafting out of it on the soft afternoon breeze – her mother's, her father's and her aunt's, who had just moved here.

When he came in, the door swung shut with a quiet _clunk_, grabbing at her butterfly mind. She watched him approach her, guarded, but didn't really think to move out of the way until he stepped around her. Too late, she slid to the side and mumbled what she hoped was an apology but really could be anything, then forced her thoughts back down to the words on the page in front of her, completely missing any reply he might have given her as he continued on his way.

A moment later, her mother, Lisa, appeared at the doorway, worried eyes turning to relieved ones as she observed her daughter quietly reading just as she had said she would be, rather than in conversation with a stranger as the woman had feared (yet quietly hoped) she would be.

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><p>The second time they met was at that same building, now a little more familiar. She was on the front doorstep this time, on the second step, her feet neatly lain out in front of her. <em>The Bell Jar <em>balanced precariously on her knees, one of them jigging fast in a movement that could be mistaken for a nervous tick but was not so common to her to be called that. She was sure that if it kept going, her heel would break right through the pavement below, but she couldn't bring herself to stop. Briefly, she imagined the street flooding, then discarded the thought, trying to pull herself back to the words on the page.

He was coming in again. She gave him a precursory glance, the same one she gave everyone that passed her by on the quiet street, only vaguely recognising him as the same man she'd encountered on the stairs inside on her last visit. She remembered his purple scarf and scruffy shoes. Quickly, she checked the sky for rainbows, but of course it hadn't rained in weeks – by the time she realised there was nothing but blue to be found above her, she'd missed his polite greeting and covert observations of the book she was reading and he'd passed right on by.

She swung around in time to watch his scruffy shoes and messenger bag disappear up the stairs, then turned back to staring blankly at the pages of her book, letting the wind turn them as it pleased. In the foyer, behind the doors, her father's eyes followed the man as he passed them by, then snapped to her, but all he saw was a young woman reading. As she should be.

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><p>The third time they met was the only time that would matter. She was not on the stairs, or indeed anywhere near the strange-but-familiar apartment building. It was a Friday night, closing in on a Saturday morning. She was in a tree, courage boosted by the glow of nearby street lights and the light from the hallway, which was always there to soothe her. The hallway light spilled into her bedroom, only just reaching the open window that she'd climbed out of in order to reach the branches of the large sycamore tree in the backyard. From there, she'd gone up, reaching for the comfort of the stars, those bright little lights in the sky that even the most terrifying darkness could not put out. Of course, they could be smothered by clouds, but they always stayed shining, and they were always there when she needed them.<p>

The thing was, she was terrified of darkness, whether the darkness of night or a room without lights, or the darkness of stormclouds hanging on the horizon. Without light, she found she could not function – without light, she was terrified, and descended into a state of gibbering and bizarre behaviours. The hallway light kept terror at bay. So did stars. She loved stars.

That was where she was when she first heard the signs that something was wrong. In the tree, with branches to hold her and stars to comfort her. Like parents, only her real parents were sleeping soundly inside the house. There was a scream, breaking glass. Shots, like bullets from a gun, one, two, three. Things always came in threes, she thought. Her mind filled with triangles, with pyramids. She traced an upside-down 'V' in the stars. Silence. _The silence depressed me._ _It wasn't the silence of silence. It was-_

_The Bell Jar._ What was a bell jar? Did it ring?

_-my own silence._

She smiled, just at her own small victory. _It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. _And never had a quote fit to a moment quite like this.

Wait. Her own silence.

One, two, three. Three. Three shots had split the night. Three shots, three people. But not one for her. Like friends.

There was a light on in the neighbour's house, visible just in the corner of her eye. Her eyes were fixed on the dark windows of her house, on the dark window of her room. The hall light was gone. Ice crept through her veins. Her hands shook. She wrapped them around calm branches, just to give them something to do. Her heart sped up. Too fast, too loud. What if someone heard it? She hardly dared to breathe. They could hear that too.

She could feel panic rising in her stomach, squeezing at her chest, shortening her breath further. Doctor Tannler came to mind, Doctor Tannler and her father. A deep breath found its way into her lungs, and then another, their voices echoing in her ears. For a second, she thought they were in the tree with her. She tore her eyes away from the house, closed them. _A Mad Girl_. What were the words? What was the music? _I shut my eyes and the world drops dead._

The wind rushed past, bending and pulling the branches around her. She could feel the smooth bark of the tree pressing into the palms of her hands. A siren ripped through the silence, getting closer and closer. A deep frown creased her brow. The world wasn't dead. Her eyes were closed, but the world was so alive around her. Had she not done it right? Had she forgotten the proper words?

There was shouting in her house, then shouting below the tree. Slowly, carefully, she opened her eyes, looking down into the bright lights of several torches. They hurt her eyes, accustomed to the darkness as she was, and bounced off the branches of the tree, setting it on fire. Each leaf was a little flame, each branch filled with smoke and embers. Voices called from behind the lights, trying to coerce her into coming down. _I lift my lids, and all is born again_. There wasn't an easy way down in the dark, she knew. She didn't try.

A light flicked on to the right. It was her bedroom light. _I think I made you up inside my head. _She didn't quite remember him, though there was something familiar about the silhouette at the window that made her head towards it. Under her breath, she muttered the first three lines of the poem, over and over.

When he heard it, he frowned, not quite understanding. She hadn't realised that the lines had fractured and splintered, that she was missing bits and jumbling them up. That the poem made no sense to anyone but her by now.

His face became clear as she climbed through the window, and then with a jolt, she remembered him. Their third meeting wasn't on the stairs. It was in her bedroom, with the notion that something was very, very wrong hanging in the air between them.

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><p>He led her toward the stairs, and she let herself be led, choking down words before they could rise up and out of her throat like vomit, all mixed and without real meaning. <em>Deep breaths<em>, she reminded herself. _One does not love breathing._ Who knew where that came from. Maybe one day, she'd stumble across the book that had told her about breathing again, and then she'd know.

To get to the stairs, they first had to pass her parent's room, where the greatest group of people had gathered. They all stood around, one with a camera. What was he doing? She craned her neck, looking around the skinny man that was trying desperately to pull her away, wanting to see what it was all those people were doing in her house, in _that_ room. And then she saw it, the two people she knew and loved most in the world. Her mother lay on the bed, looking just like she was sleeping, except that her eyes were open. There was another body on the floor – her father, she knew, though she couldn't see his face. There was glass on the floor. Blood stained the sheets and the carpet. There was even some on the wall.

She stopped dead, shock running through her like an electric current. A choked sob escaped her, and she lunged towards the bodies, not caring about the glass, or the multitudes of people between her and them. Three! One, two, three. Three shots. One for her mother, two for her father, who had never been one to give up that easily.

An arm caught her before she could cut her feet on the glass, or disturb the people who just stood there and calmly observed the disaster that had invaded her house. It wrapped around her waist and pulled her away towards the stairs, where she couldn't see them anymore. The corner of a vest like the ones all the strangers wore poked into her back; somehow, she stumbled and tripped her way down the stairs without falling, the purple man from her aunt's place pulling her down, down, down, away from the horrors. And waiting at the bottom was another stranger, a woman with blonde hair and kind eyes, who led her to the living room and sat her down on the couch, one hand on her back to comfort her.

It was comforting.

Her knee started to jiggle, up and down, without her permission. Maybe it was a nervous tick after all? Her eyes strayed to the couch. It was purple. Red and blue made purple. The image of her parents flashed through her mind again. A tear dripped down her face, and then another. Soon, she was drowning in them.

She'd imagined a flood when she met him last. She didn't have to imagine anything now.

There was a book on the table. _The Collected Poems_. She leant forward and snatched it up, opening it to a random page and devouring the words like gulping in great breaths of air to calm herself. _I hurl my heart to halt his pace._

The blonde woman was saying something, but the words were bouncing away before she could hear them, like there was a wall between them. She closed the book and collected herself, blinking a few times to clear her eyes of tears. "What?" she asked, when she felt coherent enough to comprehend what was being said.

"What's your name?" was the question, repeated with a kind smile.

She racked her brains. Her name, her name. "Mallory," she said suddenly, remembering. "Mallory Reynolds."

"My name is Jennifer Jareau, or JJ if you want." The woman's eyes drifted to the poetry book in her hands. "You like reading?"

The words sounded like they were for a child, but at that moment she didn't mind, clutching her book tighter and nodding. "My parents," she said, and then stopped. "Are they-" She stopped again. The words just wouldn't come.

JJ nodded. "I'm sorry Mallory," she said quietly. "Your parents are dead."

She blinked, but didn't do much more, just stared at the book in her hands. "How old are you?" the woman asked her.

"Twenty-" She screwed her face up in a grimace, pulling her thoughts together. "Twenty six," she tried again, managing to spit the whole thing out this time.

"And did you notice anyone before tonight who might have been looking to harm your family or get revenge on your parents? You don't have to answer right now if you don't want to," she added hurriedly.

Mallory's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, left hanging without any words trying to fight their way out. She tried to think back over the past few days. A memory jumped out at her immediately, then disappear. She grit her teeth in frustration. "There was…" The sentence trailed off as she caught hold of it again. She'd been waiting for Doctor Tannler – there'd been a weird man in the corner, watching her. She'd ignored him, because people watched her with weird looks whenever they met her, and he was in a therapist's office, so more likely than not he was just as troubled as her. They couldn't all be normal.

"In Doctor Tannler's office, there was a man…" She shrugged. JJ didn't press.

The man, the one she'd met three times (three shots, she remembered suddenly, her mind going off on a whole new path), appeared at the doorway, beckoning urgently to the blonde beside her. JJ said something about being right back, and then left her. Mallory could still feel the warmth of her hand on her back, like JJ had never left. And then they came back, and the blonde resumed her position, and her hand really was there after all and she wasn't just imagining it (unless she was imaging JJ's entire existence). The man, his purple scarf around his neck, sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of them, looking at them with curious eyes. For the first time, she saw him properly. He was all bright eyes and soft edges, from the unruly curl in his hair to his long fingers, pressed together and resting on his knees as he leaned forward.

"Mallory," JJ began softly, drawing her attention. She looked between the two, not sure what was going to happen. Her stomach twisted with nerves, though she tried to convince herself that she didn't need to be nervous. These people had come in the middle of the night for her. "Do you have any…medical conditions that we should know about?" She caught the blonde woman's glance worried at the man, and his nod of reassurance. Their eyes turned back to her.

She nodded, taking a deep breath. "I have, uh…" Mentally, she cursed herself as she stumbled over the words, but she just couldn't help it. Another deep breath, to calm herself. "Dis-disorganised schizophrenia." Her knee started up again, the drumming of her heel muted by the grey carpet. She caught a hint of pain in the man's eyes, and then it disappeared. Maybe she'd imagined it.

"Hi" the man said. "I'm Doctor Spencer Reid, I work with JJ. You're Mallory, right?" His voice was soft like his face, and with a curious pitch. She liked it – she wished he'd talk more, so that she could just listen and not have to talk herself. She nodded in response, waiting for him to continue. "Are you related to Kathryn Reynolds?"

"She's my aunt," Mallory informed him. "I've met you before."

"Mrs Reynolds lives in the apartment below mine," he said, at a questioning look from JJ. "You remember me?" he directed at Mallory.

"Yeah," she said, shifting uncomfortably. "You were going upstairs and I forgot to move. There wasn't an actual rainbow, I just got confused, and it hadn't rained either. Have you ever read the letters Zelda Fitzgerald's husband wrote to her doctor? They thought she had schizophrenia too, but she actually had a different psychosis-"

"Hey, hey, Mallory." JJ cut across her and she paused, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Had it been something she'd said?

"One of the most common symptoms in disorganised schizophrenics is disorganised speech," Doctor Reid said, his words almost falling over each other in their eagerness to get out. "Abnormal or illogical thought processes make it hard for them to organise their thoughts and it shows up in their speech. Someone with disorganised speech can move from one topic to another midsentence without realising, give irrelevant answers to questions, or even be unable to speak properly at all."

"Word salad," Mallory finished with a nod, a bit miffed by the facts he'd just rattled off but not enough to be offended by it. At least he knew what he was talking about. "I don't usually do that unless I'm off my meds. I just get off-topic sometimes when I try to say a lot of things."

There was a beeping from JJ's pocket; removing her hand from Mallory's back, she pulled out a slim phone, stared at it a moment, then shoved it back into its fabric grave. "Is it okay if we take you back to the station with us?" she asked.

Mallory shrugged. "I guess. I have to get some things first though."

"Whatever you need," the blonde agreed.

"Some of them are upstairs."

JJ paused a moment. "I'll go get them for you," she supplied.

She held up the Sylvia Plath book that was still in her hands. "I need her other two books. And the notebook with them, the-" It took her a moment to realise she'd stopped speaking, and then to remember the words she was chasing. "The green one."

The blonde disappeared, and after a moment Mallory stood and waded her way through the multitudes of people in her house to the kitchen, the doctor trailing after her. For a few moments, she wandered around the room, picking things up and putting them back down when she realised that they weren't what she was looking for until finally he caught her eye and stopped her in her tracks, snapping her out of the sudden, useless activity.

"What are you looking for?" he asked her. She looked around, and then shrugged.

"Something," she replied, eyes wandering about the room once again.

His sizeable intellect set to work, figuring out the puzzle she had left him. Within thirty seconds, he had the answer. This was, after all, where he had found it. Reaching over to the bench right beside her, he held up her medication, right in front of her where she couldn't possibly miss it. "This?" he asked.

She snatched it off him, shoving the packet in her pocket. "I think so." Then JJ returned with her books, the very sight of which calmed her. As she left the house, she stole a glance at the clock. It was just after midnight; her parents had died at the closing of an old day, and now she was starting a new one in a world without them and in the company of more strangers than people she'd met in an entire year.

Anything could happen. But anything was what she dreaded.


	2. The Madness Of Some

A/N: Ahhhh thankyou for all your follows and reviews and favourites and time and...thanks :D It makes me so happy to see them all there :D :D Just a short one this time (and a bit of a boring one in my opinion...oops) also the worst editing I've ever done; I've been working on a novel at the same time, and I just wanted to get it out there. Forgive me? xD Actual Spencer Reid in the next chapter a Lot, I promise.

**Two**

**The Madness Of Some**

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><p><em>But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams<em>

_His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream_

_His wings are clipped and his feet are tied_

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; Maya Angelou

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><p>Their station was quiet and tidy, paperwork stacked neatly on desks and floors kept well clear. There was a coffee machine on one side of the room, what looked like a conference room on the other. Doors led to more offices, presumably where people higher in the chain of authority got to work, in their own company rather than the company of all the people who would sit at these desks. Neat was such a far cry from her usual surroundings that for a moment she couldn't do much more than stare, laying her books on the table carefully and resolving to keep her restless hands away from stacks of paperwork, abandoned coffee mugs, or the occasional knick-knack that was a sign of a desk's ownership.<p>

She'd been seated at what was probably the cleanest desk in the entire room, being saddled with the least paperwork and organised down to the pens and pencils that resided there. They'd assured her they were going to contact her aunt, and then disappeared off to the conference room. At least six people were in there currently, all part of the same team, from what she could tell. There was no way for her to know what they were discussing; the blinds on the room were drawn and the door left open just a crack, so that they could check on her from time to time. Not that she had any plans on disappearing – she had no idea where in the building she was, let alone the city, and even if she did, exploring really wasn't her thing. She was more of a 'sit inside and read' type.

Presently they finished what had been an impromptu meeting and disintegrated, each taking their own path. The man from before – Spencer Reid, if she remembered right (she was terrible with names – but a last name like 'Reid' reminded her of books, which made it easier, and Spencer was such an unusual name that it just stuck in her head without her really meaning it to), approached her, eyes appraising her books as they had several times before. "I never liked poetry," he said, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Neither did I, until my dad taught me how to read it," Mallory replied, choking a little at the thought of her father, who was now dead. She pushed it aside, determined not to cry while she was here in a police station, surrounded by strangers who had met her because they had come to investigate a murder. Crying could come later, when she was alone with her strange thoughts and books that could not help.

There was one thing she needed to know though. "What happened?" she asked.

He frowned; she could almost see his brain working overtime. "What do you mean?"

"My parents. Why did they die?"

"Oh." He fell silent, like he was deciding how much information he could give her. The silence was frustrating; she could feel her hands curling up into balls, and had to force her fingers to relax. All she wanted was the truth, was an answer to whatever had happened to her life, which she now realised had gone from fine and dandy to absolute chaos in the last few hours.

"Are you sure you want to know?" he asked, worried. "It's only been a few hours, and-"

"I want to know," she said firmly, cutting him off. "I need to know."

He heaved a heavy sigh.

"Your family was the latest target of a serial killer, who refers to himself as the 'mad doctor'," he began cautiously, pausing to give her time to absorb the information. "He leads a small gang who have been targeting families with dependent children, and most of the dependents suffer from mental illnesses."

"Like me," Mallory added in quietly, picking up one of her books just to have something in her hands. She took a deep breath, and then another, forcing herself to stay calm, to not lose it in front of these (both impressive and terrifying) people. "Why didn't they kill me too?" she asked finally, not willing to stop without the full story.

"Usually, he kills only the carers and takes the dependents with him. We think he may have just missed you because you were outside, and then panicked because your parents found out they were there."

The image of her parent's bodies came back to her again, just as vivid as when she'd first seen them. Her mother had been in bed still – maybe she hadn't even woken – but her father was spread-eagled on the floor, where he had fallen. And there had been other noises before the gunshots. Someone had screamed, and there had been glass breaking, presumably from her father throwing something at the invaders. He had fought them. He'd lost, but he'd fought them.

His bravery was a small warmth deep in the ice that had begun to form in her chest at the wrongness of it all. Surely this was all a bizarre dream? Those happened sometimes. Surely, sooner or later, she would wake up or come to her senses, and all of this would be a blurred memory that she could barely call up.

But she waited longer and longer, and no waking happened.

Her aunt appeared at the door, taking long strides to get across the room in record time and sweep Mallory into an unexpected hug. The girl stiffened. She barely knew Kathryn Reynolds, her dad's sister; the woman had distanced herself from the family a long time ago, only coming back a few months ago when she moved to the city. Mallory barely recognised her. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, and her clothes mismatched and crumpled, her usual neat and professional look absent in the early hours of the morning.

Kathryn turned to JJ, introducing herself, handing out another hug. Her voice began to slip into the special tone that she reserved just for when she was near Mallory (she'd heard the woman's real voice, when she'd escaped into the hallway and left her father and aunt to talk, and it was nothing like that). It was the sort of voice she hated, and Kathryn was the sort of woman she avoided, so Mallory easily tuned her out, focusing on the book in her hands. The Bell Jar.

Five minutes later, a hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her to her feet, and then JJ was leading them out of the building. One of Kathryn's arms remained wrapped around Mallory's, no matter how she tried to extract it. She wasn't even allowed to carry her own books; all three were now tucked tightly under her aunt's other arm, well out of reach.

The car drive was short, silent, and in the opposite direction of everything Mallory knew. The house, too, was quiet, with that musty, unlived in sort of smell that she greatly disliked. There were two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a combined kitchen and lounge room, all filled with unfamiliar furniture and a good deal smaller than her own house. A policeman sat on the couch, watching TV. JJ left.

She slept fitfully, reliving the night and waking with the image of her parents fresh in her mind until finally she couldn't take it anymore and got up to find something else to do. It was barely seven in the morning, she noticed as she passed the clock in the kitchen. The cop had drifted off to sleep sometime in the past few hours, the TV throwing weird colours over him like a blanket. She could just hear the fake laughter of an imaginary audience emanating from it as she crept past.

The light in the bathroom was brighter than the soft colours of the TV, jolting her awake when she flicked it on. Blinking several times, she closed the door behind her and leaned on the edge of the sink, eyeing herself in the mirror. Piercing blue eyes looked back at her, surrounded by a thin face and dark hair with a certain wave to it. She looked like she had a bird's nest on top of her head, she realised now, and reached up to fix it. There was only so much she could do with her fingers though, and it still looked like a bird's nest.

Sighing, she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, in a half-hearted effort to wash her parents from her mind, and then left the room. The cop was snoring now, she noticed as she walked out, the remote for the TV about to fall out of his slack fingers to the floor. With little effort, she rescued it from its fate and flopped down into the other couch, flicking through channel after channel. There was very little of interest on TV early on a Saturday, she realised soon, settling on cartoons that were technically there to keep early-rising children entertained.

A groan came from the other couch as one cartoon ended and another began, the man stirring and stretching, blinking against the sunlight trying to break through the curtains on the other side of the room. He glanced around, taking stock of everything; the closed curtains, the TV, the rustling of her aunt moving in her sleep. Mallory. His eyes traced a line between her and the TV a few times, thinking slowed by lingering sleep.

"Cartoons?" he asked finally. She nodded absently, her eyes not leaving the screen as Roadrunner continued his never-ending teasing of not-so-cunning Coyote. "My kids would love you."

He stood, yawning, and finally she turned to look at him. He wasn't very remarkable, just one of those people that would blend into a crowd. Completely average. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Name's Darren," he yawned, crossing to the kitchen and switching on the kettle.

"You have kids?"

"Yep. Three of them. All under ten. They drive me mad sometimes, but I love them anyway, you know?" The kettle clicked off, and he set about searching for the coffee. "I even miss them, when I'm out on jobs like this."

"Sorry," Mallory said, watching him stir his coffee.

Darren shook his head. "No, don't be. Blame that twisted psychopath they're trying to track down. You want coffee?"

"No."

"Suit yourself." Mug in hand, he went back to the couch, and she trailed after him. "Luckily," he continued as she sat down. "We've got one of the best teams in the country working on this case. They'll catch him, no doubt about it."

"What are you two talking about?"

Mallory looked up; her aunt was awake and standing behind them, regarding Darren with some suspicion. He withered under her glare, shifting uncomfortably and putting his coffee down to avoid spilling it. "We were just discussing the case," he said, in a voice that lacked the confidence he had shown earlier.

"Any news?"

He shook his head. "None but, like I told Mallory here, one of our best teams is working on it."

She sat down, clearly interested. "The BAU team, isn't it?" she asked. Darren nodded. "I've heard about them, they're very impressive, aren't they?"

This got the cop's attention, though Mallory was completely lost. She wasn't very good at keeping up with current affairs. "Oh, they're impressive all right. I think most people in this line of work want to be on that team. They're amazing to work with."

"One of them lives upstairs." This caught Mallory's attention. "A young man, about Mallory's age, though I don't know his name…I always wondered how someone so young could get into such a risky job."

"Spencer Reid," Mallory said suddenly, causing both heads to turn and stare. She glanced between them, and then shrugged. "The man who lives upstairs. His name is Spencer Reid."

"How do you know that, dear?" her aunt asked.

Her voice had slipped back into that sweet, sympathetic tone, the sort of voice someone would usually use when talking to children, throwing Mallory off. She shrugged again, and then turned back to the TV and tuned them out, regretting saying anything. It wasn't like she'd meant to; the name had just stuck in her head from their brief meetings in her house and the police station. His face had stayed in her memory too. Soft, she remembered. Soft and kind, with a face that was much younger than any of his co-workers, though he was still their equal.

She didn't really know him, she realised suddenly – she had a name and a face, a purple scarf and a list of facts about schizophrenia that had been rattled off with hardly a pause for thought or breath. Here she was, giving people his name like she'd earned the right to know it, but she didn't know him at all.

She had no idea who he was, but he was infinitely interesting all the same.

At ten, her aunt realised she'd forgotten to take her meds.

At noon, Darren left and another police officer took his place. This one wasn't so friendly, or so willing to share information.

At two, there was a call to say that she was safe, that they could go home…wherever home was now. The man who had killed her parents was in hospital with a bullet in his leg – soon, he would be behind bars. There were five other people in the same situation as Mallory, though she declined the offer to meet them or attend the counselling sessions they were facing. They'd been kidnapped and held in an old warehouse while she'd sheltered in this unassuming little house, and she was bad at making friends.

Her excuses were weak, but they worked.

Home, it turned out, was her aunt's (no, Kathryn – she didn't like the idea of being an aunt) apartment, the one a floor below Spencer Reid's (who she only knew four things about). Kathryn didn't seem particularly thrilled at the new arrangement, but she didn't seem particularly thrilled at the thought of her brother dying either, so Mallory didn't question it.

Her new room was tiny, not like her old room in her old house. For a moment, she wondered how all her books would fit in there (they wouldn't). She'd looked around the rest of the apartment, but the only bookshelf to be found was filled with knick-knacks and photos and trophies and all the things that people put out on their cupboards and shelves to collect dust and be admired once in a while. There were probably ten books in the entire house. Well, thirteen now. She had brought Sylvia Plath with her, at least.

At five thirty that afternoon, while she was sitting at the kitchen table eating whatever Kathryn had put in front of her, she saw Spencer Reid pass by the open front door, and heard his light footsteps climbing the stairs. He looked thoroughly worn, like he'd hardly slept in the last few days. Maybe he hadn't.

She almost went out to talk to him, to ask him about the man and the case that her aunt was being decidedly tight-lipped about. Almost. By the time she'd made up her mind and gathered her courage, he was gone.


End file.
